Some new things...

Google Earth.

Podcast support in iTunes v 4.9.

Konfabulator - desktop widgets that are pretty lightweight and useful. Have a few running on my 2nd monitor - can get rid of some apps and use widgets instead.

Pop Peeper - monitor (and even reply) your email accounts without keeping Outlook open (which eats up over 100 Megs of RAM iin my case)

The gals.

Met up with Steve at Stone Mountain and rode around the rock a few times. Afterward, we all met up with Mary & Ed and ate at the German Restaurant. Wonderbar!

Cybie tries a lei.

Finally saw "Revenge Of The Sith"

And it was good. About an hour into it I realized: "Hey, I'm actually enjoying this one." This is in stark contrast to Episode II where I couldn't wait for it to be over. This one kept moving, had a decent plot, and was interesting to see how everything comes together for Episode IV. And I found out that George Bush would be considered a Sith according to George Lucas.



Highlights:
- Jar Jar Binks only appears for about 3 seconds and doesn't speak.
- Wookiee army!
- R2D2 jumping out of the ships when they landed.
- R2D2 sneaking around and fighting some evil droids.
- R2D2 shocking an evil droid to no effect - "Ouch!"
- Yoda entering the room and flattening the 2 guards with a swipe of his hand.
- Did I say Wookiee army?
- General Grievous' cough (there's something about going to the dark side has causes side effects on your respiratory system)
- Wook...ok, I like Wookiees...
- I like Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan in this one much more than the previous films.

Lowlights:
- The lightsaber battles are yawners at this point.
- The dialogue was better, but still pretty bad. Is that part of the charm or just bad writing???
- No "Jedi Mind Tricks"...

Podcasts and online TV

Been checking out some new avenues for content distribution - good stuff happening...

Show Links:

• "This Week in Tech"


• "systm"


• "thebroken"


• "The Laporte Report"


• "From The Shadows"

The refugees from TechTV have been gathering weekly to create a Podcast called "This Week in Tech". Leo Laporte, Patrick Norton, Kevin Rose, Robert Heron, Yoshi DeHerrera, David Prager, Roger Chang, the great John C. Dvorak and other guests run a roundtable of the current tech topics. It's nice hearing the old gang together again. Leo also does "The Laporte Report".

What is a Podcast? Wikipedia Podcast entry...

On the video side, Kevin Rose has started a new show distributed on the Internet at systm.org. I think Kevin is still going to produce more episodes of his other show, "thebroken".

Yoshi and Robert can also be found on another good show called "From The Shadows" - more hardcore geek stuff.


These shows are usually distributed by BitTorrent. Before visiting these sites, download and install Azureus (free, open-source BitTorrent client) and then you will be able to handle the .torrent seed files.

Google logos

They have lots of 'em...
(this is the "Frank Lloyd Wright" one)

Saw Vinx at the Apache Cafe

Didn't get a picture, but after we had dinner w/ Steve Saturday night, we went to the Apache Cafe downtown and saw Vinx. He put on a great show as he did when we saw him last year. Erin is a sport to go to the sidestreets of downtown Atlanta with me.

We first saw Vinx when he opened for Sting (does Sting really need the link?) on a couple of his tours and I was totally impressed and have kept up with him ever since. Interesting bio on his site - was an Olympic-level athlete (shut out in the '80 boycott) and has made the rounds with some of the best in his musical career. Super guy in person as well.

He's an amazing guy to watch and another one of the truly talented who's ahead of the curve and should be at the top of the heap. Great voice and unique style - and not a bad percussionist of course. I most enjoy hearing him sing accompanied only by his daiko drum as he outlines the implied chord changes with his vocal melody. A complete package: songwriting, lyrics, performance.

At a few points of his live show, he uses a phrase sampler to layer and loop his vocal parts to build a groove that he sings over - very cool and creative...

As he said at his show, he's got another CD to release but they've got to go through another 600 rappers first.